Buff - if someone says something needs a buff it means the developers need to make the weapon better to use/more effective
Nerf - opposite of buff

Before we hop straight into game play and the specifics about how to hold your own, we need to talk about game menus. As soon as you hop into the game, and create your own unique player name, and choose the sex that you want, head over to Settings tab, and click on Video. If you have a sub par PC, turn everything down. If you have a good gaming PC, then crank everything up as high as you would like. I play at max, but this is mostly up to you.

Optional Tweaks for high end PC's: Turning off Lighting Shafts can increase visibility on maps such as Vertigo. Turning off shadows even on the highest end PC's can greatly increase frame-rate and give you an edge over other players.

Part 1: Game-play Basics.

This is the customization sub tab. Equipment. This covers the gear you have as far as Armor, Helmets, Boots, Medals, Camo, and Gear.

Training. Optional, but I would recommend doing this.

In the training level, the following sections are detailed:

Shooting Primary weapons.

Blacklight has many weapons. But for now, we will stick with the Assault Rifle. All guns and attachments are buyable with Game Points. From now on, I will refer to them as GP.

This your bread and butter. Use nothing but stock weapons until level 15. At that time, rather than scraping for GP, you can have enough GP to buy the attachments that you find most useful. Now, how do you know if you find something useful? I will have a through and through build guide for guns, but for now. The gun you have should look something like this:

Hacking. In game modes such as Domination and NetWar, hacking is used to capture points. Hacking is simple, match one of the two numbers on the outside, to the one on the inside.

HRV. This is what makes Blacklight what it is. Hyper Reality Visor, or HRV is activated when V is pressed.

HRV, is basically legal wall hacks. You have a short piece of time to use HRV. While it is on, you can see through walls. All of them. The downside to HRV is that it needs to be recharged, and worst of all, you cannot use your weapon, any of them.

How do you use HRV correctly? HRV is best used by players who can use it to flank enemies. And more than that, turn it on, and right off, for a quick battlefield assessment. In the right hands, HRV makes you a weapon on a scale of no other. A player who uses HRV correctly, will win pretty much all of the gunfights that he is in. Information is power, use it.

Thank you for reading, videos coming soon for Back To Basics.

Game Modes. This is a basic rundown of the game modes featured in Blacklight: Retribution.

Team Death-Match, kills, lots of kills. Kill the enemy team, first to 75 Eliminations (or whatever the server dictates) wins the match.

Domination. Capture the points, first team that reaches the target amount of points, wins. Points are attained by holding captured points.

NetWar Hold and capture any of the four control points in the four areas of the map, and capture a communal flag which spawns in the center. Only by controlling a point on the map is it possible to capture a flag.

Capture The Flag. Run into the enemy spawn area, grab their flag, and run back to your base to score a point for your team.

Siege. Only playable on Nuken at the moment. Escort a armored Spider Tank through the map from one end to the other. Along the way, the team escorting the Spider Tank must hack gates, to let the Spider Tank through.

Death-Match. Free For All. Kill every one.

These are the basic game types in Blacklight: Retribution.

Part 2: Intermediate Tactics, and Concepts.

This section is all about tactics, no pictures will be used.

The first idea that we will cover is gun-play.

The first rule of gun-play is IRON SIGHTS and OPTICS. Use them, always. Firing from the hip works, but you will be very inaccurate, and it is harder to focus on an enemy, and kill them. If you are aiming with your optics, or firing from the hip, aim for the center mass, or the head. I would implore you not to aim for the head usually, because the head is so small. If you are using a weapon that has any small bit of recoil, if you don't kill them when shooting at the center mass, the recoil will aim upwards to your target's head, yielding you a headshot. This thesis does not hold true for the AMR and the BAR, as you should always be aiming for the head.

Each weapon is tailored to a certain play style, but often can be molded to be used how you would like to.

The Assault Rifle is made to be the all purpose tool, it retains quite a bit of power at close and long range, but it's mail point of strength is medium range combat.

The Assault Rifle is free. It is attained permanently from the beginning.

The Sub-Machine Gun is a low precision-high rate of fire weapon. It does very well at close range, hip firing at high speeds. What it makes up for in rate of fire, it looses in accuracy. The Sub-Machine Gun is the only weapon in the game that by default increases the running speed.

The SMG costs 200 GP to rent for one day.

The Combat Rifle is designed for long and medium range combat, making it a perfect Designated Marksman Rifle. Following in the footsteps of the Bolt Action Rifle (although, a bit less extreme) it has trouble in close quarters because of the slow rate of fire.

The Combat Rifle costs 200 GP to rent for one day.

The Light Machine Gun (LMG) is made for Close Quarters Combat, and Mid Range fighting. This is because it is very unreliable. It has a very high spread, high recoil and is very heavy, on the upside it has very high dammage and a high ammo count.

The Light Machine Gun costs 200 GP to rent for one day.

The Burst-fire Rifle is excellent replacement for the Assault Rifle, it fares well at close, medium and even long ranges. It fires in three round bursts.

The Burst-fire Rifle costs 200 GP to rent for one day.

When you can't get into the Assault Rifle or the LMG, it would be a wise choice to look to the Heavy Assault Rifle. It EXCELS at close range killing, but suffers from long reload speeds and poor accuracy at range.

The HAR costs 350 GP to rent for one day.

The Light Machine Gun - Recon hybrid of the LMG and the SMG. It deals less damage at longer ranges with higher accuracy and better run speed.

The LMG-R is only available through chance packs, but when the AMR comes out, it will be purchasable for GP and Zen. There is a pre-made variant available.

The Tactical Sub-Machine Gun is made for a similar purpose as the SMG is. The T-SMG is made for running and gunning, but it is better for aiming down the sights, due to its higher accuracy than the SMG.

The TSMG costs 250 GP to rent for one day.

The Burst-fire Sub-Machine Gun is primarily is used for running and gunning while hip firing similar to the Tactical and normal SMG's are. The low recoil and max spread allow for better sustained fire at the cost of being generally inaccurate.

The Anti-Materiel Rifle (AMR) is a single shot, one shot one kill rifle. It deals 275 damage per shot, and kills every enemy instantly. It is very accurate, but if you miss, you must go through a nearly four second reload time. It is available for 350 GP.

That wraps up all the current primary weapons.

Secondary weapons.

The 9mm Pistol is the default secondary weapon for each player. It is weak, and does less dammage than other pistol secondaries. Overall, it is a poor choice for high-level players, but low level players should use it, due to the fact that it is free, and conserving GP is key.

Firing a heavier .45 Calibre cartridge the Heavy Pistol is an step-up from the default Light Pistol. It has a higher damage, higher fire-rate, higher accuracy than the Light Pistol, but is matched by its heavier weight, smaller ammo count and a longer reload.

The Revolver deals high dammage from all ranges, has fairly high but manageable recoil pattern and deals very high damage. It has six rounds in each magazine.

The Revolver costs 200 GP to rent for one day.

The Shotgun is a very effective Close Quarters Weapon. Often it will take out an enemy in one shot. It is unique in that it can take a stock without adding a carbine barrel modification.

The Shotgun costs 200 GP to rent for one day.

The Shotgun AR-k has a high rate of fire but is almost completely ineffective at ranges beyond a few feet. It fires full automatically, and is highly customizable.

The Shotgun AR-k costs 200 GP to rent for one day.

The Burst-fire Pistol is similar to the Light Pistol in that is a portable and small sidearm. It deals slightly more dammage than the Light Pistol, fires in three round bursts and has a a larger magazine.

The Burst-fire Pistol costs 200 GP to rent for one day.

The Machine Pistol is unreliable and inaccurate at range, but at close range it is very effective. It deals massive dammage dammage over a short period of time.

The Machine Pistol is the BEST primary weapon in Backlight: Retribution, the Revolver is a close second.

The Machine Pistol costs 200 GP to rent for one day.

The Dart Gun is a single shot, sticky grenade launcher. It can take a full variety of explosive ammunition types, a direct hit will always result as a kill, no matter how high HP an enemy has.